ALIVE AND WELL ENOUGH: An Audio Memoir, by Jeff Daniels. Read by the author.
At the beginning of “Alive and Well Enough,” Jeff Daniels tells listeners exactly what to expect from his audio-only memoir. “I’m going to let you in on what I do, how I do it, why I did it and, in some cases, why I’ll never do it again,” the Emmy-winning actor says. He promises stories, scenes and songs, then delivers on all fronts. Over the course of 12 short chapters, Daniels slides from charming anecdote to clever bit to folksy tune with an earnestness and alacrity not heard since Garrison Keillor’s final dispatch from Lake Wobegon. This may sound like condescending praise; but it comes from a person with a weakness for nostalgia.
What elevates Daniels’s project from schmaltz to hearty stew is Daniels’s blend of humor, honesty and vulnerability, all served with his self-described “laconic Midwestern demeanor.” These dispatches are from real places — Kansas, Michigan, New York City — and they’re populated by names like Jane Fonda and Aaron Sorkin. Occasionally the sound effects strain credulity (that was not the crinkling of an actual Twinkie wrapper, an experienced Hostess eater can tell you), but such annoyances are balanced by the sincerity of Daniels’s reflections, like the one about what it was like to play Atticus Finch in the Broadway production of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Best of all are Daniels’s insights into the creative process — in his words, “creating something that wasn’t there before” — and where he is now, “stuck between once upon a time and the end.” Arriving at the conclusion of “Alive and Well Enough,” a listener has the sense that this versatile performer has a few more memorable roles in his future.
Elisabeth Egan is an editor at the Book Review and the author of “A Window Opens.”
ALIVE AND WELL ENOUGH: An Audio Memoir | By Jeff Daniels | Read by the author | Audible Originals | 52 minutes
